Christopher Scoates Appointed Director of Museum of Arts and Design

More than a year after Jorge Daniel Veneciano resigned as its director, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York has found a new person for the position: Christopher Scoates, the director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He will remain in his current position at the academy and museum until the end of the academic year and start at MAD on July 1.

Scoates has been director of Cranbrook since 2014. Prior to that, he had been the director of the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach, where he worked for almost a decade, and chief curator of the University Museum of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among the exhibitions he has helped organize over the years are surveys of work by LOT-EK and Allan Wexler, as well as the Brian Eno project 77 Million Paintings. He has also contributed to Sculpture, New Art Examiner, and Art Papers.

Veneciano, the previous director of MAD, resigned in early 2017 after having worked there for just four months. “Current political events compel me to turn my attention to pressing needs in the cultural sector,” he said in a statement at the time, adding that he felt “compelled to return to the work of fostering cultural democracy.”

In a statement, Scoates said, “I greatly admire the museum’s track record of experimental exhibitions, and I look forward to building upon its rich history of craft, art, and design. With its dedicated staff and board, I know we can position ourselves as a leading museum in the 21st century. I am eager to begin developing new experiences for our audiences that will honor the history of MAD while also using art and design to challenge the way we think about the future.”